How does the concept of transnationalism fit within the framework of social identity? What is the relationship between ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’? Do transnational migrants define themselves as such, or are they labeled by others (researchers of simply ‘others’)? These are some of the questions we will try to answer in this paper by discussing the concept of ‘transnationalism’ through the lenses of several perspectives drawn

A special issue of THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE FAMILY STUDIES http://soci.ucalgary.ca/jcfs/ Guest editor: Cristina Bradatan (Texas Tech University) THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE FAMILY STUDIES hereby invites contributions for a special issue on the topic: East-European Family Patterns, Historical Context and New Developments More than forty years ago, John Hajnal introduced the notion of an European pattern of marriage/ household, characterized

During the last decade or so, the existence of a Balkan cultural identity has been hotly debated in books, articles, conferences, and other scholarly practices. It has been argued that the cuisine, supposedly common throughout the Balkan Peninsula, might be a form through which this cultural identity manifests itself. Using statistical data regarding the diet components over the last 20 years, this paper attempts to evaluate how valid the notion

Why does Eastern Europe have the lowest fertility in the world? Most explanations focus on the consequences of upheaval in that region during the 1990s. These so-called "transition" explanations miss a major part of the story. For the Romanian case, we show that the decline in fertility over the 1990s represents the continuation of a longstanding trend that was only interrupted by the extremely efficient pro-natalist policies inaugurated in the 1960s.

Throughout the past years, substantial discussions have dealt with the factors associated with ethnic conflicts such as institutional designs, group dynamics and the influence of external peacemakers. However, one area remains largely uncovered: this is how the domestic politics of a nation state shape minority issues from the same ethnicity in another country. In this paper we discuss the dynamics of Hungarian politics relative to the Hungarian

In this paper I compare the suicide theories advanced by two 19th century thinkers, Masaryk and Durkheim, and test their conclusions using data from an East European country, Romania, before and after the 1989 fall of communism. Using data from various sources (Censuses, vital statistical publications, European databases), I follow two main directions in my discussion: a) differences and similarities between the two theories of suicide and b) what

A restrictive population policy led to almost doubling the number of newborns from one year to another in Romania in the 1960s. Twenty years later, this large generation (of women) enters a marriage market with few eligible older mates, in a society where marriage is a must. In this paper I analyze this social experiment within the broader frame of the marriage squeeze/ two sex models. Using various data from censuses and surveys, I argue that the

In this paper, we analyze the patterns of first union formation of various cohorts in Hungary using competing risk models (Cox regression) applied to retrospective data (women sub sample, N=8931) from the Gender and Generations Survey for Hungary, wave 1 (Turning points of the life course, 2001). Our results show that, while there is a well defined tendency of the younger generations to choose cohabitation rather than marriage as a first union, the